The Cat Who Turned on and Off (2 page)

“Christmas in Junktown!” Qwilleran said to the feature editor. “How does that grab you?”

Arch Riker was sitting at his desk, browsing through the Friday morning mail and tossing most of it over his shoulder in the direction of a large wire bin.

Qwilleran perched on the corner of the editor’s desk and waited for his old friend’s reaction, knowing there would be no visible clue. Riker’s face had the composure of a seasoned deskman, registering no surprise, no enthusiasm, no rejection.

“Junktown?” Riker murmured. “It might have possibilities. How would you approach it?”

“Hang around Zwinger Street, mix with the characters there, get them to talk.”

The editor leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Okay, go ahead.”

“It’s a hot subject, and I can give it a lot of heart.”

Heart
was the current password at the
Daily Fluxion.
In frequent memos from the managing editor, staff writers were reminded to put heart into everything including the weather report.

Riker nodded. “That’ll make the boss happy. And it should get a lot of readership. My wife will like it. She’s a junker.”

He said it calmly, and Qwilleran was shocked. “Rosie? You mean—”

Riker was rocking contentedly in his swivel chair. “She got hooked a couple of years ago, and it’s been keeping me poor ever since.”

Qwilleran stroked his moustache to hide his dismay. He had known Rosie years ago when he and Arch were cub reporters in Chicago. Gently he asked, “When—how did this happen, Arch?”

“She went to Junktown with some gal friends one day and got involved. I’m beginning to get interested myself. Just paid twenty-eight dollars for an old tea canister in painted tin. Tin is what I go for—tin boxes, tin lanterns—”

Qwilleran stammered, “What—what—what are you talking about?”

“Junk. Antiques. What are
you
talking about?”

“Hell, I’m talking about narcotics!”

“I said we were junkers, not junkies!” Arch said. “Junktown, for your information, is the place with all the antique shops.”

“The cabdriver said it was a hangout for hopheads.”

“Well, you know how cabdrivers are. Sure, it’s a declining neighborhood, and the riffraff may come out after dark, but during the day it’s full of respectable junkpickers like Rosie and her friends. Didn’t your ex-wife ever take you junking?”

“She dragged me to an antique show in New York once, but I hate antiques.”

“Too bad,” said Arch. “Christmas in Junktown sounds like a good idea, but you’d have to stick to antiques. The boss would never go for the narcotics angle.”

“Why not? It would make a poignant Christmas story.”

Riker shook his head. “The advertisers would object. Readers spend less freely when their complacency is disturbed.”

Qwilleran snorted his disdain.

“Why don’t you go ahead, Qwill, and do a Christmas series on antiquing?”

“I hate antiques, I told you.”

“You’ll change your mind when you get to Junktown. You’ll be hooked like the rest of us.”

“Want to bet?”

Arch took out his wallet and extracted a small
yellow card. “Here’s a directory of the Junktown dealers. Let me have it back.”

Qwilleran glanced at some of the names: Ann’s ’Tiques, Sorta Camp, The Three Weird Sisters, the Junque Trunque. His stomach rebelled. “Look, Arch, I wanted to write something for the contest—something with guts! What can I do with antiques? I’d be lucky if I tied for the twenty-fifth frozen turkey.”

“You might be surprised! Junktown is full of kooks, and there’s an auction this afternoon.”

“I can’t stand auctions.”

“This should be a good one. The dealer was killed a couple of months ago, and they’re liquidating his entire stock.”

“Auctions are the world’s biggest bore, if you want my opinion.”

“A lot of the dealers in Junktown are single girls—divorcees—widows. That’s something you should appreciate. Look, you donkey, why do I have to give you a big selling on this boondoggle? It’s an assignment. Get busy.”

Qwilleran gritted his teeth. “All right. Give me a taxi voucher. Round trip!”

He took time to have his hair trimmed and his moustache pruned—his standard procedure before tackling a new beat, although he had intended to postpone this nicety until Christmas. Then he hailed a cab and rode out Zwinger Street, not without misgivings.

Downtown it was a boulevard of new office
buildings, medical clinics, and fashionable apartment houses. Then it ran through a snow-covered wasteland where a former slum had been cleared. Farther out there were several blocks of old buildings with boarded windows, awaiting demolition. Beyond that was Junktown.

In daylight the street was even worse than it had appeared the night before. For the most part the rows of old town houses and Victorian mansions were neglected and forlorn. Some had been made into rooming houses, while others were disfigured with added storefronts. The gutters were choked with an alloy of trash and gray ice, and refuse cans stood frozen to the unshoveled sidewalks.

“This neighborhood’s an eyesore,” the cab driver remarked. “The city should tear it down.”

“Don’t worry. They will!” Qwilleran said with optimism.

As soon as he spotted antique shops, he stopped the cab and got out without enthusiasm. He surveyed the gloomy street. So this was Christmas in Junktown! Unlike other shopping areas in the city, Zwinger Street was devoid of holiday decorations. No festoons spanned the wide thoroughfare; no glittering angels trumpeted from the light poles. Pedestrians were few, and cars barreled past with whining snow tires, in a hurry to be elsewhere.

A wintry blast from the northeast sent Qwilleran hurrying toward the first store that professed to sell antiques. It was dark within, and the door was locked, but he cupped his hands to his temples and
looked through the glass. What he saw was a gigantic wood carving of a gnarled tree with five lifesize monkeys swinging from its branches. One monkey held a hatrack. One monkey held a lamp. One monkey held a mirror. One monkey held a clock. One monkey held an umbrella stand.

Qwilleran backed away.

Nearby was the shop called The Three Weird Sisters. The store was closed, although a card in the window insisted it was open.

The newsman turned up his coat collar and covered his ears with gloved hands, wishing he had not had his hair trimmed. He next tried the Junque Trunque—closed—and a basement shop called Tech-Tiques, which looked as if it had never been open. Between the antique shops there were commercial establishments with dirty windows, and in one of these—a hole in the wall labeled Popopopoulos’ Fruit, Cigars, Work Gloves and Sundries—he bought a pouch of tobacco and found it to be stale.

With growing disaffection for his assignment he walked past a dilapidated barbershop and a third-class nursing home until he reached a large antique shop on the corner. Its door was padlocked, and its windows were plastered with notices of an auction. Qwilleran, looking through the glass door, saw dusty furniture, clocks, mirrors, a bugle made into a lamp, and marble statues of Greek maidens in coy poses.

He also saw the reflection of another man approaching the store. The figure came up behind him
with a faltering step, and a thick voice said amiably, “You like ’at slop?”

Qwilleran turned and faced an early-morning drunk, red-eyed and drooling but amiable. He was wearing a coat obviously made from a well-used horse blanket.

“Know what it is? Slop!” the man repeated with a moist grin as he peered through the door at the antiques. Relishing the wetness of the word, he turned to Qwilleran and said it again with embellishments. “Ssssloppp!”

The newsman moved away in disgust and wiped his face with a handkerchief, but the intruder was determined to be friendly.

“You can’t get in,” he explained helpfully. “Door locked. Locked it after the murder.” Perhaps he caught a flicker of interest in Qwilleran’s face, because he added, “Stabbed! Sssstabbed!” It was another juicy word, and he illustrated it by plunging an imaginary dagger into the newsman’s stomach.

“Get lost!” Qwilleran muttered and strode away.

Nearby there was a carriage house converted into a refinishing shop. Qwilleran tried that door, too, knowing it would not open, and he was right.

He was beginning to have an uneasy feeling about this street, as if the antique shops were fakes—stage props. Where were the proprietors? Where were the collectors who paid twenty-eight dollars for an old tin box? The only people in sight were two children in shabby snowsuits, a workman with a lunchpail, an old lady in black, who was plodding along with a
shopping bag, and the good-natured drunk, now sitting on the frozen sidewalk.

At that moment Qwilleran looked up and saw movement in a curved bay window—a clean, sparkling window in a narrow town house painted dark gray with fresh black trim and a fine brass knocker on the door. The building had a residential look, but there was a discreet sign: The Blue Dragon—Antiques.

Slowly he mounted the flight of eight stone steps and tried the door, fearing it would be locked, but to his surprise it opened, and he stepped into an entrance hall of great elegance and formality. There was an Oriental rug on the waxed floor and delicate Chinese paper on the walls. A gilded mirror crowned with three carved plumes hung over a well-polished table that held chrysanthemums in a porcelain bowl. There was a fragrance of exotic wood. There was also the hush of death, except for the ticking of a clock.

Qwilleran, standing there in amazement, suddenly felt he was being watched, and he turned on his heel, but it was only a blackamoor, a lifesize ebony carving of a Nubian slave with turbaned head and an evil glint in his jeweled eyes.

Now the newsman was convinced that Junktown was something less than real. This was the enchanted palace in the depths of the dark forest.

A blue velvet rope barred the stairway, but the parlor doors stood open invitingly, and Qwilleran advanced with caution into a high-ceilinged room
filled with furniture, paintings, silver, and blue and white china. A silver chandelier hung from the sculptured plaster ceiling.

His footsteps made the floor creak, and he coughed self-consciously. Then he caught a glimpse of something blue in the window—a large blue porcelain dragon—and he was moving toward it when he almost fell over a foot. It looked like a human foot in an embroidered slipper. He sucked in his breath sharply and stepped back. A lifesize female figure in a long blue satin kimono was seated in a carved Oriental chair. One elbow rested on the arm of the chair, and the slender hand held a cigarette holder. The face seemed to be made of porcelain—blue-white porcelain—and the wig was blue-black.

Qwilleran started to breathe again, thankful he had not knocked the thing over, and then he noticed smoke curling from the tip of the cigarette. It—or she—was alive.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asked coolly. Only the lips moved in her masklike face. Her large dark eyes, heavily rimmed with black pencil, fixed themselves on the newsman without expression.

“No. Just looking,” said Qwilleran with a gulp.

“There are two more rooms in the rear, and eighteenth century oils and engravings in the basement.” She spoke with a cultivated accent.

The newsman studied her face, making mental notes for the story he would write: wide cheekbones,
hollow cheeks, flawless complexion, blue-black hair worn Oriental style, haunting eyes, earrings of jade. She was about thirty, he guessed—an age to which he was partial. He relaxed.

“I’m from the
Daily Fluxion,
” he said in his most agreeable voice, “and I’m about to write a series on Junktown.”

“I prefer to have no publicity,” she said with a frozen stare.

Only three times in his twenty-five years of newspapering had he heard anyone decline to be mentioned in print, and all three had been fugitives—from the law, from blackmail, from a nagging wife. But here was something incomprehensible: the operator of a business enterprise refusing publicity.
Free
publicity.

“All the other shops seem to be closed,” he said.

“They should open at eleven, but antique dealers are seldom punctual.”

Qwilleran looked around aimlessly and said, “How much for the blue dragon in the window?”

“It’s not for sale.” She moved the cigarette holder to her lips and drew on it exquisitely. “Are you interested in Oriental porcelains? I have a blue and white stemmed cup from the Hsuan Te period.”

“No, I’m just digging for stories. Know anything about the auction sale down at the corner?”

She coughed on the cigarette smoke, and for the first time her poise wavered. “It’s at one thirty today,” she said.

“I know. I saw the sign. Who was this dealer who was killed?”

Her voice dropped to a lower pitch. “Andrew Glanz. A highly respected authority on antiques.”

“When did it happen?”

“The sixteenth of October.”

“Was it a holdup? I don’t remember reading about a murder in Junktown, and I usually follow the crime news carefully.”

“What makes you think it was—murder?” she said with a wary glint in her unblinking eyes.